[aprssig] Doubling APRS messaging in ham radio overnight

[Earl Needham]

Ben Jackson wrote:
> Older, working pagers are a dime a dozen on the used market and there are
> some people who have refitted them to work on Amateur bands[2]. With the
> fact that there (quite literally) buckets full of working pagers at
> HamFests, why not have a "messagegate" that takes APRS messages to
> stations and translates them to a message destined for a POCSAG
> compatible pager. There were certain KAM TNCs that could encode POCSAG
> natively
>
> Comments? Laughter? Rotten tomatoes? :)
>   
    Years ago I had a pager converted to receive on 146.76, our local 
repeater.  We had a new controller that would send paging tones to open 
it up.  Sadly, after about 3 uses, the "old fogeys" decided it was 
illegal.  We had quite the discussion, and one of them finally called 
the FCC monitoring office in Powder Springs, Ga, and simply asked 
them,"Paging isn't legal on amateur frequencies, is it?"

    Of course, you know the answer he got.  He didn't use all the 
information available, and so got the answer he wanted, and paging was 
discontinued on our local repeater.

    If you try this, be prepared for other "old fogeys" to step in and 
try to take the fun our of amateur radio.

    7 3
    Earl

    Oh, BTW -- this was in Valdosta, Ga.

-- 
KD5XB -- Earl Needham
Clovis, New Mexico DM84jk
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cw_bugs
Quoting from the Coast Guard: ZUT